Ticketgreen co-founder Vetri Selvan on its acquisition by BookMyShow

Bigtree Entertainment Pvt Ltd, the company that owns and operates the movie and event ticket booking site Bookmyshow.com (BMS) has acquired Ticketgreen.com, an entertainment ticketing portal mainly catering to the South Indian market, for an undisclosed amount. While the financials of the deal were not available, as part of the acquisition, Ticketgreen Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company behind Ticketgreen.com, will transfer all key assets to Bookmyshow.com along with all existing cinema partnerships under the Ticketgreen brand (read here for more).

Techcircle.in caught up with Vetri Selvan, director, Ticketgreen, who co-founded the company along with Palani Ganesh, Kumar Kannan and Nagaraj Ruthirakotty in 2007, to get more information on the acquisition, the kind of deal it was, and what comes next for the founders. Here are the excerpts of the interaction.

Why/how did you decide on the acquisition?

We were not actually looking at being acquired, rather at getting a strategic investment from someone from a similar industry, which would in turn help us accelerate our growth even further. Though we got some investor interest, it was not exactly the kind that we wanted. On the other hand, with BMS, we could have a lot of synergy between the companies, since while they have a strong presence in northern India, in the South they did not have strong partnerships with individual and regional multiplexes.

These are the areas where we are quite strong, so we took a call to approach them and hence the acquisition took place.

Is it a stock plus cash deal or a pure cash deal?

It is mostly an all cash deal, which basically means that none of the Ticketgreen founders hold any stock in BMS as of now.

When will the transition be complete?

The transition actually involves a number of things and we cannot fix an exact timeframe for the same, it could take up to 2-3 years. But as far as the technology integration of the Ticketgreen website with BMS is concerned, we are looking to complete it by June 2013.

Will Ticketgreen.com continue to remain a standalone site?

Until the technology integration is complete, Ticketgreen.com will continue to function. But once that is done, the site will no longer remain a standalone entity and will instead be integrated into the BMS website.

Are the founders also joining the BMS team? If not, then what comes next for you?

We will transfer all key assets to BMS, along with that the close to 25 member team (across technology, customer service, operations, etc.) of Ticketgreen will also join BMS. And while the founders will not join BMS as part of the acquisition, we will continue to work with them (BMS) to make sure the transition of Ticketgreen happens smoothly.

You have to understand that while we have sold the Ticketgreen.com brand (along with Ticketgreen Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company behind it) to BMS, we continue to hold the mother brand that is Films N Tickets India Pvt Ltd. And while it is still early to say whether we will or won't start another venture going forward (considering the complete transition could take up to 2-3 years), it cannot be completely disregarded.